For many uses, such as, in the treatment of all types of fiber materials, high foreign electrolyte concentrations are added to aqueous emulsions of organopolysiloxanes containing polar groups. For example, emulsions of amino- and ammonium-functional organopolysiloxanes are burdened with large amounts of inorganic salts, such as magnesium salts and sodium salts, during the highgrade finishing of cotton fabrics and cotton blended fabrics. However, the emulsion should not break as a result.
Finely aqueous emulsions, which are sufficiently stable to foreign ions for many purposes, of organopolysiloxanes containing polar aminoalkyl groups with alkyl polyglycol ethers, in particular with ethoxylates of branched alcohols, as emulsifiers are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,057,572 and EP-A-442 098. However, the aquatic toxicity of alcohol ethoxylates is considerable. Although the biological primary and total degradation of fatty alcohol ethoxylates with linear alkyl chains is relatively rapid, that of branched-chain alcohol ethoxylates is inadequately slow.
In most uses of aqueous emulsions of organopolysiloxanes, only the organopolysiloxane constituent is used and the aqueous phase, which contains the majority of the surfactants, is passed to the waste water.
Stable aqueous emulsions of polydimethylsiloxane oils and polydiphenylsiloxane oils with alkyl polyglycosides as emulsifiers are described in EP-A-418 479. Although the alkyl polyglycosides have a very good biological degradability and a low toxicity, these emulsions are only moderately stable to foreign electrolytes, as are the emulsions with alcohol ethoxylates as emulsifiers, and because of the lack of polar groups on the siloxanes, can be employed only for certain purposes.
Washing formulations for skin and hair care which comprise alkyl polyglycosides as the main component and surfactant and organopolysiloxanes containing polar groups as the care constituent are described in WO-92/08439. The weight ratio of organopolysiloxanes to alkyl polyglycosides in this case should be not greater than 1.